Resilience assessment of the aircraft manufacturing core products supply chain: the international trade network perspective

The present study aims to investigate the static structure resilience and dynamic disrupt resilience of the aircraft manufacturing core products supply chain (AMCPSC) from the perspective of the international trade network. Firstly, this paper employs the supply chain theory and complex network methodology to establish the trade networks of aircraft manufacturing core products. Based on the real data from the UN Comtrade, the global trade value trends of aircraft manufacturing core products from 2000 to 2022 are analyzed. Then, the research quantifies the structural topological characteristics (i.e., hierarchy, agglomeration, transmission, and diversity) of the international trade networks for aircraft manufacturing core products, investigating the network resilience from a static perspective. Further, we simulate random attacks and targeted attacks from a dynamic perspective to evaluate the resilience of the trade networks under disruptions. Using the centrality metrics and the entropy weight method, we identify the core countries (regions) in the aircraft manufacturing core products trade networks. The results show that the global trade value of aircraft manufacturing core products has presented a generally upward trend in the past two decades, but major external shocks, such as the financial crisis and the COVID-19 epidemic, can lead to a decline in global trade value of core products. In the core products trade networks, there are main aircraft manufacturing countries led by the United States, which play a leading role in the trade network. The core products trade networks have obvious hierarchy and agglomeration, and generally obey the power-law distribution. Trade networks show good resilience under random attacks. While under targeted attacks, especially under betweenness centrality attacks, network performance degrades faster. Based on the findings, managerial insights for improving the resilience of the AMCPSC are derived.